Right here in the good ol’ days, I whip up a pot of millet every morning. The morning meal round these parts is called breakfast for all you flaky new-agers out there. I know mealtime routine sickens all of you, but I have to subsist and millet is a damn fine way to start another day of subsistence.

I prepare it in a pot. Yeah, I know it’s old fashioned and stuff, but I cling to my pot like it were my first child. It serves all the uses of a first child, as well. Besides millet, I can make soup in him, store dried fruits, boil tar for the roof, etc. In a way, actually, a pot is better than a first child. The latter, you have to skin, gut and bone before any good use can come of it. I suppose afterwards, though, all the bits and pieces can be stuck together this way and that to create a great many tools.

Anyhow, I prepare my millet in a pot. I boil about 118 millilitres of water and 118 millilitres of llama milk with a dash of nutmeg and a palmful of cinnamon. When that lactose gets good and frothy, I add about 0.000118 cubic metres of millet. The heat goes down to as low as possible and I put hardened skin from my first child over the top to trap steam.

(llama)

Around 1392 seconds later, it’s ready for eating.

My mother calls any grain I eat in the morning sorghum. I’ve personally never tried sorghum, knowingly, but am sure it is, with proper preparation method, as tasty as millet or quinoa. She grew up on a farm near Seminole. Very near Seminole, in fact. I’ll attempt to find the approximate place on the map. As the sordid funk surrounding Christián always says - Hang on a sec.

(Christián)

I pilfered that image from Google Maps, baby.

The point is that she grew up on a farm and only knew sorghum as a grain for livestock. She abstracts this idea out to any other grain unknown to her. Oats, though also fed to livestock in this glorious country, are consumed regularly by humans, as well, so they are exempt. Millet, quinoa, bulghar and surely others are firmly in the category of sorghum. Of course, these other grains are widely eaten by humans in countries on the outer rim of the cosmos. IE, not part of Texas.

They are all sorghum to my mother.

Shambal sits in his room wondering idly about his sorghum crop. He tends to worry like an old woman about temperatures, rainfall, sowing times and whatnot when he surely shouldn’t. One can attribute such paranoias to excessive boredom.

There is a surfiet of boredom on his (he laughingly calls it his) moon.

His mind drifts back to a note that daft neighbourly cunt sent him recently. They’d been trading notes for ages now. The small slips of poignant words are better thought through than hours of idle conversation. Shambal much prefers this method of communication. He can muse and ponder as he paces his room, sows his sorghum, or contemplates an octatonic progression he’s wanted to play on his ukulele for ages.

He always forgets fingerings on the ukulele. The daft neighbourly cunt blames it on dementia. Shambal laughs it off as drool splatters uncontrollably over his steaming plate of sorghum.

There you go, my compatriot! boasts the daft neighbourly cunt knowledgeably.

My saliva is freeflowing! It is a faucet! It is an indication of my love for my precious sorghum! he retorts.

Shambal’s solution to his fingering dilemma is to retune the instrument to a differing set of pitches before each practice or discovery session. He briefly contemplates the ukulele as it leans limply in the corner. His thoughts drift quickly back to the daft neighbourly cunt’s note, however.

Here’s what it says:

There was a fork in your proverbial road, my friend, and you chose the way more recently paved and travelled since you were hoping to meet more chicks.

The daft neighbourly cunt certainly got this right. He followed convention instead of turning fate on its cranium and forcing it to follow him. Convention left off on his expansive dirt patch on a moon far from any chicks. No no no…. chicks had been outlawed in his quadrant. His daft neighbourly cunt’s quadrant, also, which happens to be the same quadrant, actually.

No chicks means no shagging. Shambal misses shagging more than most anything from his previous lives. Fate made him a sorghum farmer, instead. Sorghum is said to provide eternal life. Eternal life is an escape from responsibility and an escape from haste. Sorghum is a good compliment to this lifestyle. It’s easy to sow, grow and harvest.

His (he should say their, but he is also a cunt) moon is excessively arid. The temperatures vacillate between 24 and 36 degrees during all seasons. He corrects his thought and blames it on previous lives. Only one season truly exists here.

He sometimes apprasingly and other times lovingly stares at his planter. It is also lazily leaning in the corner (though in a different corner than the ukulele). It’s always set to 4.213 cm. Its interface is easily programmed to plant parallel rows of seed. The sandy soil is first wetted to a depth of approximately eight centimetres. Therefore, the contraption makes two sweeps through the whole of the field.

Shambal is delighted watching the process. He even forgets about shagging for most of the time, though once he wildly masturbated as the planter (who we’ll call José from here on out) sped along row afer row, back and forth, fluidly. He didn’t actually realize he was masturbating until his own fluid splattered up over his chest and chin.

Time is measured by growing season. After José’s poignant journey, he counts 143 days before harvest. A routine set in quickly after his arrival and after the first few growing seasons. 94 additional days always go by for Shambal. He calls the period post-spawn. He likens it to a calm after a child is born (a remnant of memory from old lives) and before it is made into pot coverings, flutes, fibrous baskets and various scaffoldings. The time is pleasant, tranquil and mostly spent on music.

He shakes off these thoughts and rises. Deciding against any form of creativity, he gives the ukulele a swift kick. Shards of bark and wax scatter over the floor. A few splatter over his table. Oddly, they form a near perfect oval. He thinks to himself at this strange phenomenon:

I’ll measure the shape and use it for the next instrument’s construction.

He removes his red pen, which is by far his favourite, from his skin pouch and flips a leaf of parchment in front of him. He scribbles his return note to his daft neighbourly cunt.

It says this:

For sale by owner - another ecosystem teeming with life awaits its apocolypse and some dim ape just has to come up with the cash.

Smiling, he crosses through the last word. He time and again falls victim to residue from former lives. The word’s replacement is obvious.

The note now reads:

For sale by owner - another ecosystem teeming with life awaits its apocolypse and some dim ape just has to come up with the cash sorghum.

A contrast between my last entry’s spiel about my parents’ incessant scheduling is their pseudo-spontaneity. I use that word very loosely is this context. They did schedule the call to my Uncle for today, as it is his birthday, but did not set a specific time. I’ll call this spontaneity within constraints. When they just finished their morning duties (ie, routines), nothing was left. Therefore, the time to call my Uncle had come. This is spontaneity within constraints.

I was summoned. I refused. Luckily, they are not as petulent as they were in my formative years, and my mother took it with a grain of sorghum. I’ll call my Uncle later and chat with him for a while. Birthday or no birthday, he was a big element in my young life, surely shaping me.

Birthdays.

As long as my parents live, I’ll not be able to forget birthdays. Their whole life revolves around scheduling. And yeah, it’s more than just my mother’s cukrovka.

Someone fucked up at some point in human history and invented scheduling. Oh, yes, it was a gradual process. Meetings at sunup. Dinners at sundown. That sort of thing. Somehow it became birthdays, SCRUM and bi-annual dentist trips. I’d enjoy not knowing when it was. I do my best in times of spiralling downwards, actually, though most likely I have other intentions. I smash my clock. I draw the draperies. I exist in a cave where the so-called fourth dimension is static.

I came across this in the book Blink:

One of the most imporant of the rules that make improv possible, for example, is the idea of agreement, the notion that a very simple way to create a story (or humor) is to have characters accept everything that happens to them.

This nails the crux of why Christián and my spontaneous conversations are successful. I use the word success here in a specific context. That is, the conversations, duologues, make us immensely happy. Or content? Well, we laugh heartily at our own absurdities, in any case.

(Christián)

I’ve had this sort of repartee with other people and it is always a highlight of the era. I recall phone calls from Austin to Acy in, er, Euless and talking about the amount of evil in the atmosphere (light, that is). These conversations were respite. The daily grind was always sandpaper to my soul.

There’s another word: daily. Everything revolves around scheduling.

Improv is a way out of time for a time. (Heh.) There is no compositional set. The rules are implicit. No lead sheet sits in front of Christián or me when we begin our brilliant babbling. Reaction is the only key, and yes, as Señor Gladwell states, our ability to accept.

Another tangential concept: Positivity allows continuation. Negativity promotes blockage. This simple lesson need be taught early on.

Placing improv in the context of composition is stranger to me. The pieces I am creating now in the context of Flavigula are semi-composed. I look at the composed portions as templates. They are the implicit rules. The remainder wanders around within their bounds.

In a sense, it is spontaneity within constraints.

I’m using the term improv loosely, as well. I’m a loose guy. I do have a problem with the following refinement, however. I’m never sure whether to do it at all. Should each creation stand as it is when birthed? I think of the melody from yesterday. Let’s take a look at the finished product. (I use the term finished loosely here).

The revision sits before you. Originally, the last four bits ended differently. I am only happy with one change. The final resolved too neatly and the tritone now fixes that. Of course, the piece may well spiral into a vortex of dissonance immediately afterwards, anyhow.

Deliberate composition creates an environment difficult for amorphous structure. I use the term structure loosely here. I have to get used to these absolute words as being softer. Structure is an axis between chaos and rigidity, methinks. As one travels from the former to the latter, the template hardens. The area for exploration becomes more fixed.

I only want to have vague ideas of where the current piece may go. I’m happy with last night’s realization that the current melody comes and proceeds too quickly. I’m contradicting myself claiming I am plotting a revision! Contradiction is important in improv, baby. Deal with it.

The slow, ambient beginning is desperate in its calmness. I cannot force the melody, which is too quick for my taste to enter immediately. The next step is a transitional melody. Christián will have fun singing this hovno. Well, if he actually chooses to do it in the end.

Finé.

I deny ritual outright. I see positive and negative consequences. Firstly, most ritual denies spontaneity. The compulsion even to have that morning cup of coffee before anything else after dragging oneself out of a comfy bed deletes anything residual from dreams. They fade quickly.

I need again create a dream diary. In the past, it has spawned stories and poems - even sometimes music. I’ve arranged lines of code in unfamiliar fashions because of dream piques.

I’ve returned to a ritual, as I always do when I am with my parents in Seminole. Today is time to delete it. I mustn’t set specific schedules. If I feel like writing when I awaken, I can deny myself that first cup of coffee for even hours as I work on November. Sometimes musical flourishes arrive in dreams. They can be captured upon awakening with Lilypond easily.

(Lilypond)

I do walk in the arid park every day. These walks are never at a specific time, however, and are geared towards Spanish vocabulary. This semi-routine was ridden with more creativity in past lives here. I’d pause at random benches (there are fourteen, methinks) and scribble small epithets about a certain position of the atmosphere. I, even now, use those as jumping off points for weirdness.

I am most concerned when a ritual becomes a habit. Habit implies to me something done in a similar manner repeatedly but without much thought. Rituals, though repetative, can be carefully planned each time, though a template is always the starting point. I’ve written elsewhere that habits frighten me. The more ingrained they become, the more one is a slave to unconscious processes.

Beyond ritual and habit comes stagnation. When I was a child, I was fascinated by small programs which created virtual robots on the screen of my Tandy Radio Shack Hovnisimo Shittypie that learned. Initally, the robot was placed in the center of the play area - a bounded arena containing various obstacles. It set off in a random direction. Each time it collided with an obstacle, it’d remember its velocity and angle of impact. Then, it bounced off at a random slant. Again and again it gathered data until it found the easiest circuit within the arena. The path of least resistance! It no loger had to gather data because it’d be ensconsed in a routine. A ritual. A habit.

My parents are like those virtual robots. They have, over years and years living in my ex-grandmother’s house in Seminole, found their path of least resistance. Being a bit more complex than a virtual robot, however, their habits deviate occasionally, but are mostly set in ahem (red ((sand))) stone. Even though their jobs are in the dim past, weekends are reserved for cleaning the house. This example strikes me as bizarre - scary.

Mealtimes are also set. I believe they would be even if my mother did not suffer from cukrovka.

Modifying the details of rituals may give them more life, more intellectual stimulation. I’ve noted before that even tiny variation in lifestyle invigorates me. John once told me that I gravitate towards change. That was in 1995. Yeah, I still do. Ritual is fatty between dendrite and axon. Habit is akin to death (muscle memory not included). Shave a different species every morning. Don’t just stick with goats.

Pink Kaksteist

A hamster consumes her master (her higher power) and lies back, picking her teeth, contemplating her evolution into a carnivore.

One think I forgot to mention about Shambal’s squalid abode is the smallish recess in the wall to the right of one of two portals. It is here that he performs his experiments. These strange dealings are confined solely to rodents. Well, so far, he always thinks.

The hamster’s name is Pleurisy and she recently returned from her morning hunt. Small carnivores prefer hunting in the morning, you see. Shambal always knew this and further encourages the practise. He was a small carnivore during his stint on Neo’odiaba and rose every morning before what his compatriots called the split of nightlessness.

Neo’odiaba was lush at the time. The forest streamed with brooks, leafdrifts, and rivers of herbivorous hominids. Shambal always tried to take a portion of a hominid back with him.

A kill was never absolutely necessary. Wounding a hominid only took a bite to the back of the ankle. Shambal loved the feeling in his teeth as they sunk into calloused flesh. The popping as the scabby covering broke and juice flowed over his tongue and wetted his palate justified any amount of trek uphill, downhill, across empty fields patrolled by owls, or solitary waiting for the hordes to flow past.

When a hominid collapsed, Shambal always went for the upper thigh and groin. He tore flesh and stuffed it unerringly into his pack. One in three, he’d finish off simply because he couldn’t stand its pitiful sagging expression. Exasperation sucks.

Pleurisy left her pack in front of the recess and now naps, curled into a shape Shambal was surprised hamsters could achieve. He lifts the pack and grey meat slops onto the floor. Moving it to the table, he sits still with his nose centimetres above it for upwards of ten minutes. Then he begins licking the juices.

Of course, Shambal, too, is a hominid. He devolved from rodent form soon after arriving here. I’d like to say that he still has a portion of that rodent spirit in his blood, or in his soul, or in his satchel. Maybe I am exasperated and should be put away. No, even old Shambal seems to have succumbed to the red drift. As knowledge of the outside recedes from our moon, our beings become more and more diffuse.

It’s as if the wavelengths of our particles themselves have stretched.

One day, he’ll not be loitering in his park on that bench - or even on the opposite one. No, he’ll be consumed.

And I’ll be next.

By then, however, my greatest achievement, a monument to the order of Rodentia, will be complete. Made of grease, semen, glass, sod and fruit pits, it will be the last idle beast standing on our moon. We, the hominid lethargics, will be a fading memory.

The piece I am currently working on is tentatively titled Fog Beings. I don’t particularly like the title, but I have a disability that disallows me creating catchy titles for things. You see: My novel is named November. The connotations are as endless as the synapse is wide. I believe a comment existed in a conversation from a few days back concerning the replacement of synapses with fatty tissue.

Fog Beings is divided into the following parts at the moment.

Introduction

Two synth arpeggios tumble incessantly. One consists of four sixteenth notes. The other has five. Yeah, I know that is very typical of me and harkens all the way back to Filter. One has to have stylistic continuity, right?

This goes on for twenty measures of four. During the latter ten, a stomping beat (remindful of The Fen) begins with the one of each measure. It switches to a pseudo 5/4, accenting the one and four.

Underneath it all is a hopefully exceedingly creepy slowed down version of Christián’s guitar scraping extravaganza he sent me yesterday that procedes to dissapear during the final bars.

Acoustic abomination

I layer a short sample of Christián’s acoustic skewed a measure. The reverb applied gives it a slightly distant feeling. I contemplate returning to the fore, however, as it is the centerpiece.

An organ playing Cis and G fades in during the last ten measures. One can imagine the purpose - tension is produced. I include the stomping during the latter half again, as with the introduction.

As a beat keeping mechanism, A bizarre panned squeak assults the listener every other bar. During the first complete take of the piece (posted on Soundcloud last night for Christián’s aural perusal) featured this abberation later, as well, but I have decided this portion is its only proper place.

So - spare is good, eh? Indeed, I say. Several listens to the first take told me not to have every sequence playing simultanesouly. My mixing bane formerly and still currently to an extent is lack of tone space. Too much clutter usually fills up different spans of frequency.

The result is a muddle. Fuck muddles.

I feel these two parts are complete. Immediately afterwards, the creepy slowed down version of Christián’s guitar scraping extravaganza re-enters. The arpeggios begin again churning. A short sample of strumming is taken and accents every measure.

One amusing thing is that I am working with both LMMS and Audacity. The rhythm structure is not apparent in the latter, which I use to create the samples from the long wav he sent me.

(LMMS)
(Audacity)

For this small strumming example, I took a the clip, repeated it and positioned the repeat at exactly 2/3 of a second after the beginning. Thus, we have two strums - on the first two beats of a measure. Either I have not explored all the possibilities that LMMS offers me (I’m a lazy cunt, I know) or I am indeed only able to position samples at the beginning of measures.

The piece clops along at ninety beats per minute, thus the figure cited in the previous paragraph. The relation between 90 and 60 helps, obviously.

So, there we go.

As most humans have, I also have boxes full of hovno in various places. Well, I’d suspect that most humans don’t have their boxes of hovno in various places, but rather in one place. As we are taught to accumulate from a very young age, most humans I know are various degrees of packrat. I’ve tried to shed the tendency, but cannot fully.

(packrat)

I have boxes of hovno in Seminole, Praha and München. Those in München are most likely forever lost, however. Qué lastima. Two handwritten journals were in that stash. The contents of the boxes here in Seminole were distributed between dilapidated containers originally used to mail them from various places. Ok - from just two places: London and Tallinn. I went through the hovno, scouring my hands thoroughly afterwards, of course, a few days ago. I found a few nostalgic items. Most I just repacked. The rest I left in plain view so I wouldn’t forget to allow their inclusion here.

In 2010, I lived in London. I rented a room from a large house wherein lived seven or so other humans. I suspect other animals lived there, as well, including spiders, wasps, and squirrels. In fact, a particular squirrel used to visit me through my open bedroom (I laughingly say bedroom where actually the whole room encompassed everything - bedroom / living space / office / kitchen / vomitorium). I lived here. That cretin Christián even visited me once. Miracles do happen (said the gleeful executioner).

(here)
(Christián)

One evening, most likely in early August, Wayne and I sat in my room after fetching a horde of pivo from probably Sainsbury, just down the road. By down I actually mean down the hill since Telegraph Hill Park (the park nearest the point on the map indicated) is at the top of a hill (hence the name). Most every day, I had to walk down and back up that God-Rotted thing. Were I the deity that some lowly humans make me out to be, I’d have sand-blasted the whole of it.

Anyhow, most likely in early August, Wayne and I sat in my room after fetching a horde of pivo from probably Sainsbury. Sainsbury was (and most likely still is) the local supermarket. I shopped there often. I purchased litres and litres of alcohol there. I gave up rational comforts to do so. I splurged.

During my stint in London, I also shopped at two smaller potraviny up towards the park a bit and to the left. They were run by Indian folk who were always bemused at my purchases that usually consisted of microwave heatable Indian lunches, various greasy snacks, and a bottle of vodka.

Anyhow, most likely in early August, Wayne and I sat in a room after fetching a horde of pivo from probably Sainsbury. Wayne was also an avid pot smoker. I wouldn’t call myself an avid pot smoker, but I have been known to indulge.

As on many occasions, in my state of consciousness, I elected to write haikus and also insist that my companion join me in the process. I had recently returned from Cornwall with a sheaf of postcards. I intended these postcards for others. The haikus were to be messages sent thousands of kilometres to unsuspecting victims to riddle their minds with a confustion concerning the state of existence, a frustration regarding the fabric of their lives, and a judicious joy of the absurd. Unfortunately, they remained unmailed.

I am not sure when I stopped my absurd practise of sending bizarre postcards to friends and acquaintences. I suspect early to mid 2000s. I remember John Feldmann telling me about his grandmother’s reactions to oddities I sent him from various locales. He used to live atop his grandmother’s flat in Queens. That place knew many throbbing weirdnesses involving myself, John, Christopher, Loyal, Nataša and others. I’m quite sure many postcards could have been regarded as messages from a mentally dysfunctional miscreant. In truth, they probably were.

Anyhow, most likely in early August, Wayne and I were drinking pivo and smoking spliffs in my room in the house called Cranbrook near Telegraph Hill Park in New Cross Gate, London.

I miss that guy.

The remnants of my time in London are many incomplete recordings. The Fen was one. I’ll try to translate the remainder into coherent wholes during the next weeks. Perhaps I can even finish the sequence that can be the first Flavigula album.

I still think of music in chunks known as albums.

As in most places I have lived alone, my time alone was the most poignant. I recall episodes with Wayne and with that cretin Christián at the Cranbrook house, but mostly I was alone. I wrote, I drew, I composed, I read, and I drank there. I even made sandwiches on occasion. Pretty good sandwiches, I might add.

Alone time is creative time. When I press inwards, it becomes harder and harder to probe when my mental tentacles close in on the centre. Therefore, I’ll never completely know the whole of my being. Well, perhaps whole is a bad term there. I’ll never know the fundamental of my being. That dark singularity is unreachable. My tentacles never pass the event horizon. Instead of being sucked in or absorbed, they are repelled. My core is repellent! Imagine that.

Imagine that.

Alone time is creative time. I try to press inwards and I only reach a certain point. From there I can dig no deeper. So I dredge from that point and lift up what some call inspiration or substance from naught. It probably spurts up erratically from the fundamental and refuses to be dragged back to oblivion. Instead, I use those molten chunks to form a melody, a fragment of prose, or a drinking binge. It’s a dice roll to choose which.

• 1 or 6: melody
• 2 or 5: fragment of prose
• 3 or 4: drinking binge

Equal odds.

I’ve always enjoyed the haiku form because it forces one to crush a complex idea into a formal shape. Each word must contain a broad scope of feeling. Or, simplicity can result in vague feelings of natural phenomena. Or, you can just write stoner hovno.

Regardless … I miss that guy.

Yesterday, I reached an impasse with the Think Like A Mink programming project. I hit a wall with ember.js and was either too frustrated or too lethargic to deal with it. In the past, especially in a employment environment, such frustrations have led to stress. I am further carried upon the stream to unproductive agitation when this occurs. I have found that stepping back from a project for even a few days is the best solution. I shall do that now.

(ember.js)

Of course, when pondering this topic, Stonecrop and Steve come to mind. I’m all for planning and creativity, but Steve took it to an extreme. I believe others had the same problem I did with his methodology. As far as I know, he carries on this very day with the same hovno.

Research and design can only come so far. Perpetual research and design is ultimately distructive to productivity. If the end goal is to vomit out ideas but never implement them, I’d not be typing this on this very fine piece of word processing software called Vim. The denizens of Stonecrop, however, could not stop. Thus - the product was sloppy, irresponsive and ultimately a lumbering hunk of machinery without any aesthetic form.

(Vim)

When Jeremy and I decided to do something about the hack process, we were shot down over and over again by the quick and dirty attitude that pervaded the company (I laughingly call it that). Idealists to the marrow, we soldiered on and created the basis for a product that could flexibly expand to greatness. Fruition did not happen. The Mountain Weasel is dormant. I suspect she is only hibernating.

Think Like A Mink is wholly different. I am just stepping back for a day or two. My first goal when stepping forward again will be to deal with these few issues:

• Ember Data Store and its Promise mechanism.
• Pluralization rules gone awry (User model).
• Returning the current user via authorization key.
• Breeding Palm Civets in a fossilized Ground Sloth’s bladder.

Since Think Like A Mink is on hold for today, I shall carry on with the Flavigula musical project. The next piece will not follow directly from The Fen and Hela…, but will contain vocals. Yes, I must convince Christián to sing it.

(Palm Civets)
(Ground Sloth’s)

If this will be the case, there is the consideration of lyrics. After reading the liner notes to Le Poison Qui Rend Fou two days ago, I’m going to go with Roger Trigaux’s premise that any sufficiently meaningful lyrics will take away from the composition itself. They will readjust the focus to something that is not my intention. So, whether I create the words or I just hand that job over to Christián (him willing, samozřejmě), their nature is to be whimsical.

I only have a vague notion of how the piece will run. As with every piece of music I have ever created, its shape will contort into something previously unimagined during the composition process. Another element I need to pay more attention to is the actual timbral variety and mixing. I am decidedly sloppy at especially the latter. Improvement is needed or punishment involving cysts on my uvula. Perhaps I can have my pyloric sphyncter bifurcated. Humans are in need of another path of excretion. I’ll lead the way into a new age of hominid morphology.

Having listened many times to Richard Pinhas’s new album Desolation Row, I shall opt for a moog-like sequence percolating behind what will most probably come to be chord sequences. I may toy with creating a melody over no chord sequence, but am unsure how that would turn out. Linear counterpoint is fun, but not really in the spirit of these Flavigula sessions.

(DesolationRow)

What is that spirit?

It is the spirit of aleatoric composition.

Today’s special writing music is Open by The Necks. I am pretty sure that my parents will interrupt me during the piece, as it is approximately one hour long.

Yesterday, I spent most of my productive time grinding my molars on the bones of a Palm Civet. That is, I was getting authentication to function on the previously named Radiotracking site. The new moniker is, of course, Think Like A Mink. Though my journal is currently also hosted here, the main point of purchasing the domain name was to have a stable place to host all things related to Project Lutreola and whatever I decide to call Madis’s pursuits in the Ebro valley.

(Project Lutreola)

My fingernails are encrusted with blue.

I finally, after trying the roll yer own method and ember-auth, I went with ember-simple-auth, as it is complient to openid hovno and I suspect I should have learned that standard (by standard, I mean hovno) long ago. After allowing myself to be authenticated, I pushed the repository and became lackadaisical for the remainder of the evening. I even ate some potato chips. I purged afterwards.

(ember-simple-auth)

Today, I need to finally put together some sort of roles / permissions per user. This moment is meant as a brainstorming session.

• Users are associated with a project.
• Users can be associated with multiple projects.
• Projects are associated with organization.

Tiit wrote the other day:

YES, UNDER ONE ORGANIZATION SEVERAL PROJECTS. I WONDERS IS THERE SOME SORT OF SITUATION WHEN TWO ORGANISATIONS ARE JOINTLY RUNNING A PROJECT, THEN ONE IS LEAD-ORGANISATION.

If I go with this method, however, then my current hierarchy (though not fully realized programmatically) will be reversed. Projects will be the peak carving on the totem pole. Organizations will point to them. Users will be associated with both, independently.

Ugh.

Furthermore, animals could be associated with various projects. I don’t see as much of a problem with achieving this, however. Right now, when an animal is returned from the database, one gets the following json:

{
  "animal_id": 2675,
  "frequency": 442,
  "nickname": "Magda",
  "sex": "Female",
  "birthdate": "2012-05-18 00:00:00",
  "release_date": "2012-08-25 00:00:00",
  "microchip": "233388",
  "enclosure_type": "",
  "release_site": "",
  "remarks": "",
  "release_location_N": 0,
  "release_location_E": 0,
  "deathdate": "2113-05-10 00:00:00",
  "cause_of_death": "",
  "species_id": 1,
  "project_id": 1,
  "id": "5",
  "species": {
    "name": "mustela lutreola",
    "id": "1"
  },
  "project": {
    "name": "saaremaa 2012",
    "abbr": "s2",
    "organization_id": 1,
    "createdAt": "2014-01-06T02:47:31.610Z",
    "updatedAt": "2014-01-06T02:47:31.610Z",
    "id": "1",
    "organization": {
      "name": "project lutreola",
      "abbr": "pl",
      "createdAt": "2014-01-06T02:44:51.935Z",
      "updatedAt": "2014-01-06T02:44:51.935Z",
      "id": "1"
    }
  }
}

This butters my muffin dandily. If the animal is associated with more than one project, then I can turn “project” into “projects” and dump an array. That’s about as cute as the Palm Civet I just flayed, boned and chewed.

Users can be associated with animals, also. I’ll create a “keepers” (or just “users”) key that holds an array of them. Following Tiit’s comment, however, one user will most likely be the leader.

When I hit the url /projects, I get something like the following…

{
  "projects": [
    {
      "name": "saaremaa 2012",
      "abbr": "s2",
      "organization_id": 1,
      "createdAt": "2014-01-06T02:47:31.610Z",
      "updatedAt": "2014-01-06T02:47:31.610Z",
      "id": "1",
      "organization": {
        "name": "project lutreola",
        "abbr": "pl",
        "createdAt": "2014-01-06T02:44:51.935Z",
        "updatedAt": "2014-01-06T02:44:51.935Z",
        "id": "1"
      },
      "animals": [ ... ]
    }, ...
  ]
}

I’ll replace “organization” with “organizations” and shove an array in there, supplanting the dastardly object or hash or whatever it’s called these days in the fecund land of javascript naming conventions. I should just call it Tasty Palm Civet Marrow. So, the array I’ll shove in there will be full of tasty palm civet marrow.

Organizations will result in a similar layout.

Looking and listening back on my realization of The Fen a few days back, I’d like that plucked violin to be replaced with an actual instrument. My avid reader may recall that I mentioned a mandolin was originally intended there.

(TheFen)

I’ll approach Christián or Ryan about it today. There will be a few rules they’d have to follow, however, in doing the deed. It must be a note by note rendition, of course, and no flourishes or improvisation is allowed. They’d be free to choose timbre, though, as long as it complimented (and certainly did not interfere with) the rhodes part.

The screechy bit at the end could also call for a maniacal distorted guitar over the bass and harmonium. I’ll approach Ryan with that one, as I do not think Christián has an electric with him. In fact, I don’t even know if he has a guitar with him at all in the foul pit that calls itself Myrtle Beach.

I shall inquire.

I began listening to Zaar’s debut and only album beinning on track two so that when it arrived to track six, I’d have already begun this entry. Not so! I was dealing with an email concerning my new flat in Logroño. Yes, and the correspondence is in Español, so it takes my watery brain more time to processes and compose.

So, we’re on track six. The name of the track is Omk, and I find that name very descriptive of the music therein. It’s a meandering piece. It runs for over seventeen minutes. I’ve listened to it in the background numerous times, but never sat and absorbed it on headphones. At least I don’t recall doing so.

I should mention at this point, as an aside, that I received this CD from Wayside in December of 2006. Michal chose to visit me in Brno later in the month. As predicted by the whorling constellations as seen from the depths of Andromeda’s super-massive black hole, I loaned said CD to him. Samozřejmě, I have not seen it since. So, it may as well belong to Michal at this point. Heh. I hope Mirka is playing it perpetually to Bart in his cradle. Aural education!

(Wayside)

Omk has reached one of what I term a floating point. A steady drone paints the backdrop as the guitar, drums and hurdy-gurdy percolate in the foreground. These floating points sometimes build slowly to become another thematic statement. At other times, the following thematic statement just crashes in obliterating the ambience. This particular one chose the former method.

In my novel November, a long, meandering scene sees Shambal and our favourite protagonist sitting in a café in New York City. They are the only occupants. Well, they are the only non-imaginary occupants. Actually, that is not exactly right, either, since the scene takes place after the protagonist has died.

Note to reader: Dying in November’s world and your world are not precisely the same.

Omk has reached another floating point - one that actually ends the piece. Everything spins. There is a central, shall we say, vortex, but it is never touched by the instruments. They dance around it. The final snare hit which ends everything can be thought of as everything being suddenly sucked into this vortex. That super-massive black hole gets sick of the repetition. Silence.

Approximately seventeen minutes have passed.

Many habitual actions fluster me. I don’t recall sometimes if I’ve taken my antibiotic capsule or not. I have strange sticking feeling in my throat. This indicates that I probably did take it, but I have no actual recollection of the action. The deed was either immediately deleted from my short-term memory or wasn’t recorded in the first place.

I am bot

HE

red by

SUCH MENTAL INADEQUACIES

Many habitual actions are useful, including most all things related to muscle memory, but deliberacies such as the aforementioned pill taking are frightening. For example, it is bothersome to not recall if one sucked down a tab of LSD half an hour ago or not when a few more are scattered on the bar amidst the bottles of vodka, beer and ether.

Approximately no minutes have passed.

I’d be pleased to live in the flat I mentioned earlier. The location is here.

(here)

In Tuzla, I also lived in a studio and was pleased. I’m not one to need much space. If someone does end up coming to visit (such as that cretin, Christián), they have a sofa on which to slumber and surely soil. Not to say that I am against soiling things. I’ve soiled a good number of sleeping places in my day. In fact, some were soiled so badly with grease from my filthy body that they were subsequently used as pyres or foci in furnaces to heat the homes of millions of poverty stricken rodents on the oceanic islands. Those fuckers always get shipwrecked.

(Christián)

The subject of this entry is not very indicative of its contents. My surly reader will most likely note that this is a common trait in my journals. Speaking of writing music, however, we are back at the first track of Zaar’s initial and only album. The title is Sefir. Michal and I listened intently to this one and he commented that after the current floating point (however, he did not use that phrase), the following building theme (beginning at this very moment) reminded him of King Crimson. Surely he meant Starless. I can see that, though the tonality is more Henry Cow-like to my leaky ears.

You gotta love that shrieking hurdy-gurdy.

Shambal and the beloved protagonist discuss the metaphor of the music cascading from some ambient point all about them. The piano is footstep by footstep around a constricted space. I don’t plan to mention the name of the piece in the book, but anyone familiar with latter 20th century classical music will most likely guess.

The first three movements are on repeat as I write that chapter (I laughingly call it a chapter) of the novel. The music moves my fingers to write in the same stumbling manner that the piano plays. The footsteps steady and the two characters discuss creativity and constriction. Art made in a bubble is only valid once the bubble is pierces. But, ironically, it loses its meaning when that happens.

The relevance to the author is never the same as to the listener, try though the latter may to interpret the original intent. The quartet is made from circumstance as much as from the mind of its author. All creative acts are part of their context. They are then taken out of their context and applied to a new context. Abstractions become concrete, but the solidification takes different shapes.

Pop has a more universal appeal because it is more trasparent. Easily, a pug-nose wench in Bolivia can relate as well as a drug-dealer in Berlin. The more opaque the liquid one drowns in, the more intense the experience, however. Magnificent abstractions create more complex and overall compelling tangibility.

The orginal intent may be lost, ultimately, but, again, the more opaque the abstraction, the more of a shadow it casts.

Fuck translucence.

Attempting to frown again, he reads over what he last wrote.

“Nataša is righting the slobbering creature in the corner of the studio. It grunts and licks at her. She breathes a futile harumph. The thing’s due to be on the air in thirty minutes and is clearly not ready. Half dressed and clearly stoned on some inebriating substance, one eye ogles her neckline while the other rolls eerily. She pulls at the ring on her left hand. She always does when her immediate desires do not come to fruition.

“She slaps at the drool easing from holes in the thing’s face and it splatters patterns like play-fighting ferrets on the bluish studio wall. She watches them run down into more ominous shapes and then leaves to cancel each payment made during this and the previous morning.

“She is wet between her legs, but not because of the obvious allure of the beast’s virility. She reviews a dream from the night before. It was filed away until the moment she noticed the wetness. I must do much and travel far before I enter the pool, she thinks. The creature sees her die. He is alone in the room.”

He doesn’t remember writing any of it.

I wrote The Fen when I was in New Cross Gate. One of its parts was supposed to be played on mandolin, but I never performed it to my satisfaction, the anal retentive twat that I am. I am revisiting it now.

(New CrossGate)

The initial problem with this part, which repeats once, is the attack / volume of the so-called Rhodes. I added phase and distortion to remedy that. Also, before this bit, whilst the dirgelike stomp is going on (and, indeed, before it), I added Hela. Yes, Hela. I took a small clip from a voice message she sent me last month and stretched it to 20 times its length. I then reversed it and mixed the two. The result is eerily beautiful.

Maintaining the same timbre between tracks in LMMS is becoming a problem. Perhaps there are unseen settings that affect parameters manipulated by me over three years ago. Ah! Well, part of this composition will be an injection of aleatoric aesthetics.

(LMMS)

Where the fuck is that hissing buzz coming from?

I discovered earlier that Crossover Distortion can be fantastically noisy. I have employed it in the piece.

As I was riding in the pickup truck with my father on the way to the grocery store, I thought of the track that will follow The Fen. The name will be The Bog or possibly Silt. Or even I Swabbed Your Pet Gerbil’s Anus With a Fossilized Paramecium. My idea is this: firstly, layer many tracks of Hela’s voice strectched and contracted, forming chords. If plausible, create some bastardized version of the melody in the introduction of The Fen to swim erratically through the resulting sonic morass. Provide accompaniment consisting of mid-range distorted bass and the aformentioned Crossover Distortion of the pizzicato violin.

Fortunately, a part had been left unwritten. The erstwhile mandolin part of the second “verse” (I laughingly call it that) now exists. The counterpoint to the Rhodes part penned (I laughingly call it that) three and a half years ago contains many fun dissonaces. Only a select few were planned. I leave the rest because it is one of the wondrous features of aleatoric composition.

The final mixdown using Audacity, and as I remember, tends to muddle the sound a bit, although I did a bit of noise reduction, as well, so that may be the culprit. Where, in the name of the pungent liver of Jesus, did that buzzzzzzzzzz come from, anyhow?

(Audacity)

The Fen is at this very moment uploading (itself - yes, it is a sentient being - fens are living ecospheres, don’t’cha know, ya leper?) to Soundcloud. I haven’t used Soundcloud for years, so deleted several tracks on the siralfrediv account. I tagged the mixed down flac with the artist Flavigula. My electronic and / or electroacoustic music will be under this moniker. In fact, I should create an entrely new Soundcloud account for these purposes.

Yah.

The Fen

(The Fen)